hitting the tarmac don’t break, the collision will take care of!
Then I was under the front wheels and waiting for the pain.
When it didn’t come, or at least not so much as you get shaving with a lady’s razor, I slowly got up.
No sudden agony, no broken bones. I’d lost a slipper and my stick, but I were alive and didn’t feel much worse than I’d felt thirty seconds earlier.
If we look closely we can see God’s purpose in everything, my old mate Father Joe Kerrigan once told me.
I looked closely.
Here was a road leading down to Sandytown, which had to have a pub, and I was leaning up against a car.
Joe were right. Suddenly I saw God’s purpose!
They were nice folk in the car. Real friendly. I sat in the back with this lass. Could have been thirteen, could have been thirty, hard to tell these days. Turned out I knew her dad. Played rugger against him way back when I were turning out for MY Police. He were a farmer and used to play like he were plowing a clarty field. Couldn’t see much point to having players behind the scrum. Reckoned all they were good for was wearing tutus and running up and down the touchline, screaming don’t touch me, you brute! We had a lot in common, me and Stompy.
They dropped me at this pub. The Hope and Anchor. I didn’t have any money with me. Likely I could have talked the landlord into giving me tick, but this guy Tom in the car volunteered to sub me twenty quid, T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 4 3
so no need to turn on the charm. I went into the pub. The main bar were full of trippers eating sarnies and chicken tikka and such. On the other side of the entrance passage were a snug, half a dozen tables, only one of ’em occupied by a couple of old boys supping pints. I went in there, put the twenty on the bar, and said, “Pint of tha best, landlord.”
Don’t expect he gets many customers in their sleeping kit, but to give him his due, he never hesitated. Not for a second. Drew me a pint, set it down.
I took the glass, put it to my lips, and drank. Didn’t mean to be a hog but somehow when I set it down, it were empty.
“You’ll need another then,” he said with a friendly smile.
I was really warming to this man.
“Aye, and I’ll have a scotch to keep it company,” I said. “And a packet of pork scratchings.”
I nodded at the old boys, who nodded back as I took my drinks over to a table in a shady corner. When a landlord treats me right, I try not to offend his customers.
I nibbled my scratchings, sipped my scotch, gulped my beer, and took in my surroundings. Nice room, lots of oak paneling, no telly or Muzak, bright poster above the bar advertising some Festival of Health over the Bank Holiday. With medicine like this, I thought, it couldn’t fail! And for perhaps the fi rst time since that bloody house in Mill Street blew up, I felt perfectly happy.
It didn’t last long. Rarely does. According to Father Joe, that’s ’cos God likes to keep us on the jump.
Certainly kept me on the jump here.
Hardly had time to savor the moment when the barroom door opened and a man in a wheelchair came rolling through.
He halted just inside the door in the one shaft of sunlight coming through the window. His head were shaven so smooth the light bounced off it, giving him a kind of halo. His gaze ran round the room till it landed on me.
Perhaps there was summat in the Sandytown air that stopped people 4 4
R E G I N A L D H I L L
showing surprise. The landlord had kept a perfectly straight face when a slightly bleeding man wearing jimjams and one slipper came into his pub.
Now the wheelchair man went one better. His face actually lit up with plea sure at the sight of me, as though I owed him money and we’d arranged to meet and settle up.
“Mr. Dalziel!” he exclaimed, driving the wheelchair toward me. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, you had to walk into mine! How very nice to see you again.”
I did a double take. Couldn’t
Then I was under the front wheels and waiting for the pain.
When it didn’t come, or at least not so much as you get shaving with a lady’s razor, I slowly got up.
No sudden agony, no broken bones. I’d lost a slipper and my stick, but I were alive and didn’t feel much worse than I’d felt thirty seconds earlier.
If we look closely we can see God’s purpose in everything, my old mate Father Joe Kerrigan once told me.
I looked closely.
Here was a road leading down to Sandytown, which had to have a pub, and I was leaning up against a car.
Joe were right. Suddenly I saw God’s purpose!
They were nice folk in the car. Real friendly. I sat in the back with this lass. Could have been thirteen, could have been thirty, hard to tell these days. Turned out I knew her dad. Played rugger against him way back when I were turning out for MY Police. He were a farmer and used to play like he were plowing a clarty field. Couldn’t see much point to having players behind the scrum. Reckoned all they were good for was wearing tutus and running up and down the touchline, screaming don’t touch me, you brute! We had a lot in common, me and Stompy.
They dropped me at this pub. The Hope and Anchor. I didn’t have any money with me. Likely I could have talked the landlord into giving me tick, but this guy Tom in the car volunteered to sub me twenty quid, T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 4 3
so no need to turn on the charm. I went into the pub. The main bar were full of trippers eating sarnies and chicken tikka and such. On the other side of the entrance passage were a snug, half a dozen tables, only one of ’em occupied by a couple of old boys supping pints. I went in there, put the twenty on the bar, and said, “Pint of tha best, landlord.”
Don’t expect he gets many customers in their sleeping kit, but to give him his due, he never hesitated. Not for a second. Drew me a pint, set it down.
I took the glass, put it to my lips, and drank. Didn’t mean to be a hog but somehow when I set it down, it were empty.
“You’ll need another then,” he said with a friendly smile.
I was really warming to this man.
“Aye, and I’ll have a scotch to keep it company,” I said. “And a packet of pork scratchings.”
I nodded at the old boys, who nodded back as I took my drinks over to a table in a shady corner. When a landlord treats me right, I try not to offend his customers.
I nibbled my scratchings, sipped my scotch, gulped my beer, and took in my surroundings. Nice room, lots of oak paneling, no telly or Muzak, bright poster above the bar advertising some Festival of Health over the Bank Holiday. With medicine like this, I thought, it couldn’t fail! And for perhaps the fi rst time since that bloody house in Mill Street blew up, I felt perfectly happy.
It didn’t last long. Rarely does. According to Father Joe, that’s ’cos God likes to keep us on the jump.
Certainly kept me on the jump here.
Hardly had time to savor the moment when the barroom door opened and a man in a wheelchair came rolling through.
He halted just inside the door in the one shaft of sunlight coming through the window. His head were shaven so smooth the light bounced off it, giving him a kind of halo. His gaze ran round the room till it landed on me.
Perhaps there was summat in the Sandytown air that stopped people 4 4
R E G I N A L D H I L L
showing surprise. The landlord had kept a perfectly straight face when a slightly bleeding man wearing jimjams and one slipper came into his pub.
Now the wheelchair man went one better. His face actually lit up with plea sure at the sight of me, as though I owed him money and we’d arranged to meet and settle up.
“Mr. Dalziel!” he exclaimed, driving the wheelchair toward me. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, you had to walk into mine! How very nice to see you again.”
I did a double take. Couldn’t
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